Paddock Days - Part 1

Let’s face it, bikers tend to
congregate, and in every town there is a natural meeting place where tyres will
be kicked, friends made, deals done and adventures planned.Ours was known as ’The Paddock’, and was a
place of myth and legend long before I finally got my Fizzie onto the
road.It’s long gone now, sacrificed on
the altar of increased town centre parking.As Joni Mitchell said, “They paved paradise……..”, except in this case
the Council took one parking lot that had character and significance for at least
a few residents, and filled in the space between the piers with rubble to make
a huge innocuous tarmac slab.Oh well.

On day one of my road
legality, the rain poured as a saturated wretch, too broke from buying the bike
to have afforded waterproofs, rode falteringly into this lion’s den before
courage failed me and I promptly wobbled out again.I could almost feel the derision of the hairy
leather-clads behind me.Many of you will
know how it goes I’m sure?In the first
few days of exhilarating, town circulating freedom, I spotted a similar bike
doing a similar thing.There followed a
slow motion pursuit where no ground was given, no quarter asked.With moped throttles wound to the stops, we
were Hailwood’s; Sheen’s; heroes of our own personal racetrack.Of course, being on similar mounts exhausts
screamed, teeth were gritted and chins pressed to fuel tanks to extract the
last morsel of the raw power available.Yet, our relative positions changed excruciatingly slowly as milk floats
and Zimmer framed little old ladies sailed past, but it didn’t matter.There were no winners and no losers until
eventually a traffic light changed to red, bringing us level.Acknowledgements were nodded and we pulled in
to the side of the road to talk.It was
like making first contact with an alien world for me, a call to arms from which
I have never either looked back or recovered.

The Paddock, themost westerly of three piers in Bangor, Northern Ireland, was
roughly divided in two.An increasingly
neglected funfair occupied the sea end, the inner half was land bound on one
side, with a small beach on the other.It was laid out for car parking on the beach side, with a rectangular,
flat roofed 1940’s public building opposite that.In it was a small pay booth for the putting
green laid out around the town clock,
public loos, and an area of sheltered seating that was invariably occupied by
the local bikers on summer evenings and weekends.Late on race days at the nearby Kirkistown
track, or after the annual Carrowdore road races, the whole of the pier would
reverberate to the sound of open megaphones and expansion pipes as those
returning to Belfast or beyond stopped off to chew the fat.Entering on a moped could be dangerous.

One friend, Fred Blair, an
apprentice at the local VW dealership, was foolish enough to leave his Fizzie
unattended there on a day when an outlaw bike gang had taken up residence.On his return, there was no sign of his much
beloved steed until a search revealed it launched over the seaside railings, its
bars and pedals on one side stuck into the fortunately soft sand, but covered
by six or seven feet of salty water.Only hours later when the tide eventually receded was a rescue
possible.Happily after a good hose down
and cleaning of all the important parts, it didn’t suffer much damage, but its
fate was to forever after be known as ‘The Yellow Submarine’.

That first biking summer was
spent hanging out at a local country park, the Paddock a revered utopia to
which we must yet graduate. And there
were girls.They came from the big
houses nearby, or on day trips to the park.Girls too inexperienced to realise that the chat up lines of the thick
adolescents wooing them were far from eloquent.

I remember watching from the
wings while one of our number tried his best with a local beauty.As his confidence gained in strength, they
separated from the crowd and walked quietly off, disappearing from our view behind
bushes before bridging a stream.Merciless wretches that we were, a number of us soon followed to see how
he got on.From cover on the other side
of the stream we watched as he turned solemnly to her, reached out to hold her
hands and came off with the immortal line, “Dearest darling Belinda; with your
hair; will you go out with me?”Long
before she could give answer to his attempted romance, the bush on our side of
the river erupted with laughter, while on their side skins reddened and
retreats were rapidly made.Strangely,
she never did go out with him after that, and disappeared from our company soon
after.I wonder why?

The summer was spent
extending the boundaries of our world.Petrol was expensive (it crossed the £1 per gallon barrier that summer),
so often our trips were limited by the funding available, but when possible we
buzzed around the countryside always attempting to ground our pedals on any
half decent corner.We tried off road
riding on a horse exercise track, wheelies and loads of other stupid
stunts.The learning curve on maintenance
was equally steep.While chains could be
relatively easily adjusted by following the instructions in the bikes handbook,
more complex tasks often led to a dangerous communal pooling of adolescent
minds. Bodging would be a compliment for
some of what went on, and if this was the case nationally, has surely led to
the relative sacristy of these 70’s mopeds now.

One owner of an exotic
Italian bike wanted to change its points and so went off to the local dealer,
coming back with the correct part.So
far so good, but like many small bikes the points were located behind the bikes
flywheel, and there were only small windows in it to allow adjustment.Things went downhill when, aided by
screwdrivers stuck into inappropriate engine orifices, he eventually locked the
engine enough to remove the flywheel nut, leaving war scars on the engine alloy.The audience were duly impressed by progress
to date until he was asked how he planned to remove the flywheel from its taper
without the necessary puller.“No
problem”, said he, promptly kicking the bike to life and holding the throttle
against the stop.After several seconds
of this barbarity there was a loud crack, as a couple of pounds of spinning
metal shot off across the driveway, the garden and the road beyond.Only a 16 year old mind is capable of even considering
a technique like that, and worse yet, of congratulating its ingenuity after
searching through the neighbouring hedges for the resulting wreckage.

As with all memorable
summers, the sun shone, and clouds were few.Most importantly though, as the year wore on, some of our number grew to
17 years of maturity and while some drifted away towards car ownership, others got
themselves into debt buying the coveted Yamaha, Suzuki or Kawasaki 250 of their
dreams.With this, the badge of ‘brand
new biker’ fell away and we gradually edged our way from brief visits to being
permanent residents of the Paddock.Better
yet, rather than the hard cases that I had originally envisaged, all I found
there were motorcycle nuts like those in the moped band I had joined, but with
a great deal more knowledge and experience.

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